Robert K. Webb Lecture with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Wesleyan University

For their annual Robert K. Webb Lecture, the Department of History presents

Until recently, the history profession has expressed skepticism about using history to understand contemporary events. Fear of political bias, anachronism and simply bad historical comparisons were behind such skepticism. Moreover, there were concerns that doing the history of the present would cause students to lose interest in the distant historical past--a worry inseparable from the drop in number of students majoring in history. On these grounds so called "presentism" was considered anathema to the discipline. However, Brexit, Covid 19, and the current political turn toward authoritarianism, have led to an explosion of historical works attempting to make sense of the booming buzzing confusion of the present moment. At the same time, many historians have excelled at using historical comparisons to illuminate the current order of things. This lecture explains the origins of the recent turn to the present in the professional study of history, while looking at its promises and perils for the field.